splashmans - Jamie

Hu Shih

<Biographical information>
1891: Hu Shih was born in Anhui, China
1904: His family arranges a marriage with Chian Tung-hsiu, a women who was strong with customs
1910: Hu Shih went to Cornell University to study agriculture
1911: Hu Shih joins public communities to bombard classical language
1912: But he changed his major to philosophy and literature
1914: Comes to Columbia after graduating from Cornell
1917: Hu Shih gets married, earns a doctorate in philosophy
1919: He goes to Columbia University to study philosophy
1921: Influenced by his teacher, John Dewey, Hu decides to become a translator of Dewey. He changes his life by becoming a supporter of pragmatic evolutionary change
1938: He becomes ambassador to the US
1939: Assisted in increasing the membership of the Alumni Federation
1946: Becomes chancellor of Beijing University
1959: Becomes President of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan
1960: Columbia's East Asian Library earns 25-volume set of his Chinese Writings.
1962: Hu Shih dies

<Their ideological foundation>
-Chinese Nationalist diplomatic & leader
-Important person in establishing the vernacular Chinese language
-Chinese philosopher and essayist
-A great help to the Chinese liberalism and language reform
-Experimentalist
-Agreed on Pragmatic
-Helped in improving Literacy therefore more people got education

<Who opposed them>

<Primary Source>
"A Preliminary Discussion of Literature Reform"

Write with substance. By this, Hu meant that literature should contain real feeling and human thought. This was intended to be a contrast to the recent poetry with rhymes and phrases that Hu saw as being empty.
Do not imitate the ancients. Literature should not be written in the styles of long ago, but rather in the modern style of the present era.
Respect grammar. Hu did not elaborate at length on this point, merely stating that some recent forms of poetry had neglected proper grammar.
Reject melancholy. Recent young authors often chose grave pen names, and wrote on such topics as death. Hu rejected this way of thinking as being unproductive in solving modern problems.
Eliminate old clichés. The Chinese language has always had numerous four-character sayings and phrases used to describe events. Hu implored writers to use their own words in descriptions, and deplored those who did not.
Do not use allusions. By this, Hu was referring to the practice of comparing present events with historical events even when there is no meaningful analogy.
Do not use couplets or parallelism. Though these forms had been pursued by earlier writers, Hu believed that modern writers first needed to learn the basics of substance and quality, before returning to these matters of subtlety and delicacy.
Do not avoid popular expressions or popular forms of characters. This rule, perhaps the most well-known, ties in directly with Hu's belief that modern literature should be written in the vernacular, rather than in Classical Chinese. He believed that this practice had historical precedents, and led to greater understanding of important texts.

"Constructive Literary Revolution - A Literature of National Speech"

Speak only when you have something to say. This is analogous to the first point above.
Speak what you want to say and say it in the way you want to say it. This combines points two through six above.
Speak what is your own and not that of someone else. This is a rewording of point seven.
Speak in the language of the time in which you live. This refers again to the replacement of Classical Chinese with the vernacular language.

<Cite Sources>
http://www.c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/hu_shih.html
http://ko-kr.facebook.com/pages/Hu-Shi/108293532536886